This invention relates to a cannula or sheath and particularly to a cannula useful with angiographic catheters and to a method of making a valve for same.
In certain angiographic studies, the angiographer uses the Desilets-Hoffman procedure to do a multiple study. In this procedure, the angiographer obtains access to a patient's blood vessel by inserting a hollow needle through the skin and into the lumen of the blood vessel. A guide wire is passed through the needle and advanced through the artery or vein into the organ to be studied. The needle is removed leaving the guide wire in the organ. A cannula and dilator are advanced over the wire into the vessel and the dilator is removed along the guide wire. The angiographer then conducts the multiple studies by inserting various types of catheters into the vessel through the cannula or sheath. In order to avoid excessive bleeding and to insure against the possibility of an air embolism, this technique requires occlusion of the passage through the cannula during catheter changes.
One method of obtaining the required occlusion is to position a valve body formed from a pliable material in the passageway of the cannula. Such valve bodies are shown for instance in U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,000,739 to Stevens, 4,430,081 to Timmermans, 4,610,665 to Matsumoto et al. and 5,006,113 to Fischer. In each of these patents, one or more disk-like gaskets are mounted in the cannula passage. The disk-like gaskets or valve bodies include an opening therethrough which is biased to a closed position when no catheter is present in order to prevent an air embolism from occurring by air being drawn into the patient's vein through the cannula. When a catheter is inserted through the valve body into the passage of the cannula, the valve body conforms to the shape of the outer wall of the catheter, thereby preventing blood flow out of the cannula between the catheter and the valve body.